Raw is a film you watch through your fingers — gruesome, vile, repellent, and utterly captivating.
In her striking debut, Julia Ducournau guides us through the swampy, volatile terrain of adolescence and female desire. Led by a powerful performance from Garance Marillier, the story follows a young woman’s slide into obsession and cannibalism after her first taste of raw meat.
This is not a film for the faint of heart; it’s an articulate, often brutal probe into the darkest corners of human appetite and identity.
From The Film Magazine’s Movie List, we present the most impactful and unforgettable moments from Julia Ducournau’s debut: the 10 Best Raw Moments.
10. The Beginning of Hazing
Soon after arriving at a prestigious veterinary school, Justine (Garance Marillier) learns that fitting in will be difficult. The older students, called “the elders,” stage a brutal week of hazing for newcomers. Ducournau establishes this world with unsettling clarity: elders in cloaks and masks dragging rookies from their beds in the night, the younger students crawling across a fog-shrouded quad like animals.
The scene isn’t the most violent in the film, but it sets the rules of this rigid social order: obey and endure whatever is required to belong. Ducournau’s restrained direction and the unnerving, understated score make the moment linger long after it ends.
9. The Rabbit Kidney
Here we witness Justine’s first crack. Raised a strict vegetarian by her mother, she is forced during hazing to eat a raw rabbit kidney. Her sister Alexia (Ella Rumpf) encourages her, revealing that she has already disobeyed their mother’s rules. The kidney marks the first real shift in Justine’s behavior — a tiny spark of something dangerous emerging beneath her composed exterior.
8. The First Party
After enduring the hazing, Justine makes her way to an extravagant party where students scream and kiss, and alcohol flows freely. The scene is glittering and overwhelming; Justine’s alienation is palpable, but so is her curiosity. Ducournau captures the intoxicating glamour of privileged teen parties while keeping a constant undercurrent of unease, as if disaster is only a heartbeat away.
7. Watching Adrien Play Soccer
Justine is shy, studious, and inexperienced, but after the party and her first taste of blood, deeper, more predatory urges surface. She watches her roommate Adrien (Rabah Nait Oufella) playing soccer — popular, magnetic, and crude — and the camera lingers on her intense, fixed gaze. Garance Marillier delivers a chilling, almost wordless performance here: she becomes ravenous, an animal studying its prey. The shot is quiet and devastatingly effective.
6. Justine Bites at a Corpse
Following a chaotic night, Justine watches a video Adrien shows her: provoked by Alexia, she attempts to bite a dead man’s hand at a party. In the footage her eyes are dark and feral; her humanity seems to slip away. She ends the scene screaming, “Why didn’t you stop me?” — a line that haunts her and defines her internal conflict.
5. The Car Crash
A pivotal sequence forces the sisters to face the nature of Justine’s appetite. After an initially calm conversation, Alexia deliberately throws herself in front of an oncoming car, killing both occupants. “I did this for you,” Alexia snarls, revealing a cruel, impulsive streak. This moment confirms Justine’s latent desires while highlighting Alexia’s reckless devotion.
4. Adrien’s Death
After another debauched night, Justine wakes beside Adrien — the object of her desire — only to discover his leg has been brutally chewed and his body soaked in blood. Her plea, “Why didn’t you stop me? Why didn’t you fight back?” echoes earlier moments of guilt and confusion. Adrien’s death flips the power dynamic and forces the viewer to reconsider what power and vulnerability mean in the film’s moral landscape.
3. The Sex Scene
Ducournau stages an intimate, violent dance between desperate Justine and the detached Adrien. Justine repeatedly tries to bite him; she escalates until she bites into her own skin and begins to bleed. Her face shifts into something alien. The sequence is a terrifying study of desire, control, and self-destruction — a scene that leaves the audience suspended between dread and fascination.
2. The Finger
When Alexia suffers a grisly accident with scissors and loses a finger, Justine finally acts on her urges. Alexia teeters between playful cruelty and real instability, leaving those around her unsure how to respond. As Alexia lies unconscious, Justine devours the severed finger in graphic detail. The scene is shockingly direct and viscerally unforgettable.
1. The Father’s Final Monologue
The film’s closing moments elevate it from powerful to unforgettable. Alexia and Justine’s father locks up his eldest daughter as the family’s life unravels. Sitting across from Justine, he calmly recounts his own time at the same school, then rolls up his shirt to reveal a map of old, angry wounds. With a half-smile he says, “You’ll find something that works for you.” The credits roll, leaving the viewer with a chilling blend of resignation and bleak hope.
The ending crystallizes Raw’s themes—identity, inheritance, ritual—and does so without softening its violent core. It leaves an afterimage that refuses to fade.
Julia Ducournau’s Raw is among the most discussed horror films of the 21st century; its visceral imagery and moral complexity provoke strong reactions. Which moments unsettled you most? Which scenes lingered longest in your mind? Share your thoughts and revisit these standout moments to see how Ducournau turned teenage rites of passage into a savage, unforgettable fable.